Carlos Leoni Siqueira

“The esteemed Carlos Leoni Siqueira is recognised for his “solid reputation” in transactional and corporate governance work, as well as his expertise in tax-related issues.” – Chambers & Partners

Responsible for the general coordination of the firm and its members, Carlos Leoni Siqueira became, as early as in the 1960’s, a pioneer in the integration of Tax and Corporate Laws in Brazil. Since then, he has become a specialist in this practice.

Awarded as the best student of the School of Law of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, from where he graduated in 1960, he immediately achieved a reputation for excellence as an attorney. At only 32 years of age, by the unanimous appointment of his peers in the Brazilian Association of Financial Law, he became Brazil’s representative in the Permanent Scientific Committee of the International Fiscal Association, substituting Professor Rubens Gomes de Souza, then deceased.

Since 1966, he has personally conducted complex and relevant negotiations in Brazil and other countries such as Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Japan, Italy, Switzerland and Uruguay, also working with international organizations such as the World Bank and its subsidiary, the International Finance Corporation.

Over the next decades, he proved the consistency of his reputation acting in important tax and corporate matters through the law firms C. Leoni Siqueira & Freitas Santos Advogados and Carlos Leoni Siqueira Advogados.

Between 1973 and 1992, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Gerdau companies. Between 1991 and 2001, he was responsible for the management of the investments made by the Bozano Group in several companies that, at the time, were privatized by the Brazilian Federal Government (such as Usiminas, Companhia Siderúrgica de Tubarão – CST, Cosipa and Embraer) and represented the Bozano Group in the Board of Directors of such companies. In that capacity, he was president of the committee designated by the Board of Directors of CST to set out strategies for the company’s restructuring and to orient the actions of its executive officers.

After the sale of the Bozano Group’s equity stake in steel metallurgy, he took over as chairman of the Board of Directors of Embraer, until the conclusion of its restructuring and the negotiations for the entrance of the group of defense industries of France into the company’s capital. Between 2003 and 2004, he was a consulting partner of the law firm Ulhôa Canto, Rezende e Guerra Advogados and, in 2004, he reopened his firm, with its current denomination.

He was also a professor of Tax Law of the post-graduate Course for Corporate Attorneys’ offered by the Center for Study and Research in the Teaching of Law (Ceped – Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas no Ensino do Direito) of the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, in alliance with the Post-Graduate School of Economics of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas and the Ford Foundation, as well as in the Course for Corporate Attorneys offered by the Institute of Studies of Law and Economics (Iede – Instituto de Estudos do Direito e da Economia), of which he is a co-founder and member. He was a professor of Corporate Law at Universidade Cândido Mendes and at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, where he also taught Private Law for S.J.D. candidates.